Hello and thanks for stopping by! My name is Angela. I am a scientist, wife, cat-mom, and fitness enthusiast. This page is my personal blog, and you will find a range of topics, centered around healthy living. Why “The Chicken Scoop”? Well, when I started this blog, we had just gotten a small flock of chickens and the name just stuck! I hope you enjoy your visit!

Snow & Meal Planning

Hello everyone! Finally a free day! This has been one hell of a winter “break”. First, it was chaos getting ready for Christmas. Then I had a paper to finish and got a horrible cold. I just spent the last couple of days visiting a friend.

I used to run with her all the time and then she left to move back near her family. It was just like old times! It was great that she is into healthy living also because I was able to eat relatively well and we even hit the gym once. No pressure to indulge the whole time!

Now I’m home and, I have some free time! But I have to work the next two days and classes start in 1 week. So much for break! We also got our first snowfall of the season.

It isn’t much snow but any little bit shuts down the area and I won’t be able to run due to all the ice. I do have a bit of a cough left too but I did run a few times on the treadmill the other day (at Jess’ gym) and it wasn’t too bad. Oh well, I will just get some workouts in on the back porch instead. Body Pump and Combat will have to do for now!

Speaking of which, I finally sat down to flip through some of the nutrition booklets that came with my Beach Body programs (like Body Beast, Focus T25, Body Pump, etc.) and I really like what I saw in Body Pump’s booklet.

Recently, I have been making a better effort to attempt meal planning regularly. Of course, it was thrown a little off with the trip to visit Jess but I still had a little meal plan I build based on some Eat Clean Diet books I had. For the most part, I like the principles in the Eat Clean Diet books, but there are some things I don’t agree with. For example, there seems to be a fear of fat in them and what is with the egg-yolk-hate? Anyway, I had used those as a baseline at first but still wasn’t excited.

The 7 Day Jumpstart sounds a little scary to me (only 1200 calories?!) but it is only meant to be done for a week as sort of a reset or introduction to the whole program, I guess? I like the other programs pretty well too. It seems so easy. There are lots of recipes in the booklet that are really simple and sound delicious. Honestly, the whole thing is not far off from the meal plan I had made already but it seems easier for some reason. I’ll keep you updated on any new attempts at meal plans or healthy eating in general!

I am using the booklet that came with my BeachBody DVD set. Is that what you were looking at too? I also found Les Mills has a nutrition section on their website: http://www.lesmills.com/knowledge/nutrition/
Just following their principles is a good start!
~Ang